Archives for April, 2010

[U]nlike artists or musicians, we do have competitors. Only van Gogh can paint like van Gogh and the uniqueness of Beethoven’s music is immediately recognizable. Their contributions are irreplaceable. But individual scientists are not irreplaceable. There are many, many examples of important discoveries being made simultaneously by several individuals or groups working independently. The social…

Over at scientificblogging.com, Mark Changizi has a post about “unconstrained scientific craziness”: I criticized avant-garde artists for their craziness, all the while explicitly aiming for craziness as a scientist! In effect, I was teaching my students to be avant-garde scientists, and trying myself to be an avant-garde scientist, yet somehow failing to notice that this…

These are images of cells from GE’s IN Cell Analyzer Competition 2010: every year we invite IN Cell Analyzer users to submit their images to the IN Cell Image Competition. This year we have received over 70 fabulous images from researchers’ worldwide, working in areas such as toxicology, malaria, dermatology, obesity, cancer and neurology. See…

An urban art installation proposal by Nick Rodrigues would install sculpted pigeons in Cambridge, MA, each equipped with a “pico projector” that would project a live Tweet stream. According to the Artsake blog, “Gossiping Birds” is a proposal by Nick Rodrigues (MCC Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07), one of ten artists chosen as finalists for a Public…

I wanted to let you all know that I’ve put two framed original watercolor paintings up for sale on etsy: “Bee and Echinacea” (sold) and “The Cicada” (still available). These are likely to be the only original paintings I’ll have for sale for some time to come, so if you want a BioE original this…

Yesterday was a great day for space images. First, celebrating Hubble’s 20th anniversary (via Wired): This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” or a Dr. Seuss book, depending on your imagination. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic…

FYI: I’ll be appearing next Friday on a panel as part of the “Unruly Democracy: Science Blogs and the Public Sphere” workshop sponsored by the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT. I’ll be appearing…

The Anachronism (Full Film) from Anachronism Pictures on Vimeo. The full length version of The Anachronism, a short film by Matthew Gordon Long, has been released online. The only thing wrong with it is that it isn’t longer. Give yourself a treat this weekend, enjoy the steampunk, and, if you’re like me, reminisce about taking…

Artist Balint Zsako does remarkable things with collage and biological/anatomical imagery. By embellishing his classically posed subjects with a plethora of arms, swaddlings of restrictive clothing, or provocatively opened fruit, he plays with our expectations: portraits become faceless, the suggestively private becomes public, and old-fashioned art becomes new again. Whether it’s we viewers stealing glimpses…

I’m not going to comment too much on this, but this is hilariously wrong. I learned from this EFF post that the maker of the oft-parodied Hitler film The Downfall sent a bunch of takedown notices (or something similar using filtration technology) to YouTube, prompting removal of a swath of Hitler meltdown scene parodies. Not…